Wordsworth's Daffodils in Latin

Latin Learning Latin
1

Hi,

We’re all familiar with English versions of Latin masterpieces. But what about Latin versions of English classics? And those of other languages?

I believe we might learn a lot of Latin by studying Latin versions of old favourites. I’m not suggesting we should translate the canon ourselves, rather that we should check out what is currently available on the Web or from booksellers and then list it.

The other day while surfing, I chanced upon a Latin version of a well-known German poem, Die Lorelei. Here’s the first verse (of three) in Latin:

Ignoro, quid id sibi velit,
Tristissimus cur sim,
Antiqui aevi fabellam
Cur saepe volverim.
Vesperascit et frigescit,
Et Rhenus leniter it,
Cacumen montis lucescit,
Dum Phoebus occidit.

Here is an English pseudo-poetical version:

I cannot determine the meaning
Of sorrow that fills my breast:
A fable of old, through it streaming,
Allows my mind no rest.
The air is cool in the gloaming
And gently flows the Rhine.
The crest of the mountain is gleaming
In fading rays of sunshine

Here’s the original German of Heinrich Heine, as he wrote it in 1823:

Ich weiß nicht, was soll es bedeuten,
Daß ich so traurig bin,
Ein Märchen aus uralten Zeiten,
Das kommt mir nicht aus dem Sinn.
Die Luft ist kühl und es dunkelt,
Und ruhig fließt der Rhein;
Der Gipfel des Berges funkelt,
Im Abendsonnenschein.

To those unfamiliar with this poem, I recommend you read the final two verses. Here’s the link: http://ingeb.org/Lieder/ichweiss.html

Of course, we have Alice in Wonderland, Harry Potter and other familiar works translated to Latin but WHAT ELSE is available? For example, Shakespeare’s plays/sonnets? I personally would like to find a Latin version of the Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats or Wordsworth’s Daffodils or A se stesso by Leopardi - not because I think the Latin could capture the poetry of the original but because I feel I could learn some Latin that way.

Cheers,
Int

2

Erro solus ut nubes…? :wink:

3

cdm2003:

erro? … I wander? But don’t we need the imperfect (I wandered = I was wandering = errabam)?

Just trying to prove my point (i.e. stimulus to learn more Latin). :slight_smile:

Int

4

I was attempting a lively historical narrative. :smiley: Of course, that’s always my excuse. Plus, Wordsworth is going to change tenses to the present anyway, so I agree the contrast must be made:

Erravi solus (sole??) ut nubes,
Quae in summo volante supra valles et colles,
Tunc statim turbam vidi,
Populum, narcissorum aureorum;
Prope aquam, infra arbores,
Trepidantes saltantesque in ventum tranquillum.

That’s probably an awful and very hasty start on my part. It would be fun to work with my Gradus to see if it is easily manipulated into following Wordsworth’s rhyming scheme. My favorite of his is the Ode on Intimations of Immortality. Thinking more about your original post, it would be really cool to put the actor’s soliloquy on the death of Priam from Hamlet into either Latin or Greek…or both!

Chris

5

Shakespeare’s sonnets in latin (Check out there main website for other latin versions of populer texts):
http://www.slu.edu/colleges/AS/languages/classical/latin/tchmat/pedagogy/latinitas/dv/dv.html

The Lord of the Rings in latin:
http://www.geocities.com/dominusanulorum/index.html

Contemporary Latin Poetry:
http://www.suberic.net/~marc/latinpoetry.html

I’m not sure what this’s about but check it out anyway:
http://www.uib.no/neolatin/

Check this out also:
http://latintextbook.com/default.aspx

Retiarius: Commentarii Periodici Latini:
http://www.uky.edu/AS/Classics/retiarius/

LatinChat-L:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LatinChat-L/

Jokes,songs etc.. in Latin:
http://www.geocities.com/gera_keller/JOKES.HTM

Short stories(from an earlier post):
http://linguashop.com/latin/

Songs in Latin:
http://www.laukart.de/multisite/songbook/latin.php

Grex Latine Loquentium:
http://www.alcuinus.net/GLL/index.htm

There’s tons of stuff on the web in Latin!

6

Cdm2003: Cool composition! I can’t wait for your Latin version of 'There was a time …".

Somniame: Things will never be the same after this August. First, the Latin recordings of talented Textcats gave speech to the dead. Now you come along with your set of links to new worlds of Latin.

Thanks to y’all.

Cheers,
Int

7

Quae in summo volante supra valles et colles,

?

8

Here are some random additions to Somniame’s excellent list :

http://www.grexlat.com/biblio/index.asp - Includes Latin translations from Dante’s Divine Comedy and Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe

http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/ilias.html - The Ilias Latina

http://www.obscure.org/obscene-latin/ - The Charles Bukowski Memorial Center for Classical Latin Studies (I’m not kidding)

http://www.ipa.net/~magreyn/ - Excellent electronic editions of Propertius, Virgil, Phaedrus, Cicero (Somnium Scipionis), and others (some Medieval and Renaissance authors)

http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/petronius/a/Petroniusvocab.htm - Vocabulary for Petronius’s Satyricon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Latin - Wikipedia’s entry on neo-Latin


And now for something completely different:

Carmen Magicum Ad Iter Remotum

Verba quattuor spiritum crystallizant in virium spatio.
Mense sexto nivis alba subito volat.
Vigilia tertia solis orbis radios occaecantes mittet.
In mare adflat aura Elegantiarum.
In caelo vagans consumet Receptricis vim spiritumque,
et secreti etiam altiorem secretum :
Terra illa quae nusquam,
quae domus verus est.


It’s a Latin translation of an English translation of a German translation of a poem from a Chinese text (Secret Of The Golden Flower). Poema valde mysticum. :slight_smile:

9

Well, I was trying to put the Wordsworth poem into Latin…

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Maybe I should have put the 2nd line:

Quae volat in alto supra valles et colles?

Chris

10

I forgot to include this, a colored comic strip
in latin; check it out also.

http://asterix.comics.cz/bonus.htm

11

I just didn’t (and still don’t) understand how to construe the Latin of your original composition - i.e. it seems that the relative clause has no verb stated or implied. Still, you don’t see me trying to translate the poem into Latin, so you’ve got my respect.

12

Well, 1) it’s English verse without prosaic structure and 2) my Latin is terrible. :open_mouth: I just couldn’t resist an attempt at one of my favorite poets…however poor the result.

13

Quae volat in alto supra valles et colles?



it seems that the relative clause has no verb stated or implied.

What’s volat, then?

-David

14

Cantator:

A fresh thank you for each new link. Iohannes Lodovicus Vives’ Svrrectio Matvtina is a hoot. Never thought I’d get so much fun out of Mediaeval Latin (with the help of Whitaker’s Words of course)!

Carmen Magicum Ad Iter Remotum

Verba quattuor spiritum crystallizant in virium spatio.
Mense sexto nivis alba subito volat.
Vigilia tertia solis orbis radios occaecantes mittet.
In mare adflat aura Elegantiarum.
In caelo vagans consumet Receptricis vim spiritumque,
et secreti etiam altiorem secretum :
Terra illa quae nusquam,
quae domus verus est.

For this poema valde mysticum, I needed a crutch. I found an English version which did the trick and which I copy in here (slightly modified) for the sake of others whose Latin is still dreamy:

Magic spell for the Far Journey

Four words crystallize the spirit in the place of power.
In the sixth month the white snow suddenly flies.
In the third watch the disk of the sun sends out blinding rays.
On the sea the wind of gentleness blows.
Wandering in Heaven, one consumes the power of the spirit and the Receptress.
The even deeper secret of the secret:
That land which is nowhere,
Which is true home.

According to one Web commentary: The most important thing in the Great Meaning is the four words: non-action in action. Non-action prevents a person from becoming entangled in form and image (substantiality). Action in non-action prevents a person from sinking into numbing emptiness and a dead nothingness.

By the way, mightn’t ‘in caelo’ translate Wordsworth’s ‘on high’?

Cheers,
Int

15

It’s what he added after I called his original composition:

nubes,
Quae in summo volante supra valles et colles)

into question.

Hey, I didn’t intend to make a big deal out of it or anything, I just wanted to see if the error was in my understanding of his Latin or in his Latin composition.

And (in response to the comment about prosaic structure) I don’t think that the original can work, regardless of whether we’re making prose or verse; a relative pronoun must introduce a finite verb or, at the very least, a clause in which either the verb ‘esse’ is implied, or some other verb from another part of the sentence is eliptically implied or the like.

Just sayin’!

16

One of things I picked up from Helen Waddell’s work was her enthusiasm for ML and its liveliness. I’ve always thought it was revealing that she started her famous anthology (Medieval Latin Lyrics) with the Copa Surisca and followed that with poems from Petronius. The language in those poems is certainly not ML, but the spirit presages the beauties of the scholars’ lyrics from the high Middle Ages (and before).

For more sober stuff, check out the correspondence between Abelard and Heloise.

Oh, and thank you for the pointer to Vives, the Surrectio is hilarious. The vocabulary is a bit thorny, but the sequence is very funny. :slight_smile:

For this poema valde mysticum, I needed a crutch. I found an English version which did the trick and which I copy in here (slightly modified) for the sake of others whose Latin is still dreamy:

Good work ! Yes, the translation you found is the English version of Richard Wilhelm’s German translation. I modified the English version very slightly before I translated it into Latin, but it’s essentially the same.

According to one Web commentary: The most important thing in the Great Meaning is the > four words> : non-action in action. Non-action prevents a person from becoming entangled in form and image (substantiality). Action in non-action prevents a person from sinking into numbing emptiness and a dead nothingness.

The Secret Of The Golden Flower has interest to t’ai chi practitioners precisely for this sort of passage. “Hsin wu hsin”, mind/no-mind and all that. Or as we say:

Quies in quietem non vera quies.
Quies in motum vera quies est.

Where in this instance quies=stillness. Tranquillitas might be a better choise, but quies works as well in the context.

By the way, mightn’t ‘in caelo’ translate Wordsworth’s ‘on high’?

Or perhaps simply alte or in alto, which also carries the sense of depth ?

17

Cantator:

Thanks too for those non-digital ‘linksâ€:trade_mark: that send me spinning off in all directions to hunt down more info on tâ€:trade_mark:ai chi, Abelard and Heloise. Incidentally, should I start with ‘Sic et Nonâ€:trade_mark:, Abaelardi ad amicum suum consolatoria, Heloyse sue ad ipsvm deprecatoria, or …? :confused:

Cheers,
Int

18

Sic Et Non is one of his philosophical/theological works, I’ve never read it (I don’t know if there is any easily obtainable edition). I suggest reading the later letters that you quoted. The Latin is impeccable (Medieval but very polished) and there’s no missing the latent tension.

Helen Waddell wrote a novel called “Peter Abelard” that is in fact a pretty good summary of his life and times. You might like to read it for the background to his remaining works.

There was a Reflexe disc available that included performances of his remaining music, some of which is very lovely. Alas, the Reflexe series is now available only in expensive box sets, but perhaps you can find them in a library. There are all of value to anyone studying the music and other arts of the Middle Ages.

Enjoy ! :slight_smile: